The Kickstarter Campaign for Wasteland 2 has concluded, with inXile entertainment's post-apocalyptic RPG sequel taking in well over triple its initial USD $900K goal. The finally take listed on the website is $2,933,197, though a note on Shacknews states that this does not count almost $110K in PayPal pledges, so the final total exceeds $3 million. Update: Apologies for misstating the "kick forward" principle at first, which is a pledge of 5% of the project'a eventual profits, not these pledges. Thanks Alex.

"One of the confirmed projects appearing on Origin is Wasteland 2 from inXile Entertainment. ďI have had a long relationship with EA and it is great to see them recognize and support the crowd-funded games model,Ē "We look forward to bringing Wasteland 2 to the Origin audience.Ē said Brian Fargo, CEO, inXile Entertainment.

Creston wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 14:01:If some dev said "Yeah, I'll use this funds to pay for my rent, and my laundry, and my lunches, and my attorney fees, and taking my girlfriend to see a musical", I wouldn't give him a dime.

Well, a lot of that falls under salary doesn't it? I think it's a no-brainer that these funds go to salaries and thus living expenses.

People that have a problem with Kickstater devs getting paid are idiots. What makes games? Manpower. Development money is mostly spent on man hours. People don't work for free. If you do work for free, you are stupid. Those that are actually in the financial position to work and take it off the backend later, that's their choice.

Just don't expect because it's through Kickstarter that devs should just donate their time to a project. Anyone that thinks this, should goto their boss tomorrow and tell them they don't want to be paid for 6 months, for the good of the company.

Creston wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 14:01:If some dev said "Yeah, I'll use this funds to pay for my rent, and my laundry, and my lunches, and my attorney fees, and taking my girlfriend to see a musical", I wouldn't give him a dime.

Well, a lot of that falls under salary doesn't it? I think it's a no-brainer that these funds go to salaries and thus living expenses.

I'm still a little unsure about how much information I should relay out of the backer forums

I wanted to post the picture of the piegraph and mention that the documentary team renegotiated to 15% instead of a flat $100,000. Also wanna post that screenshot from the development thread of the early engine work so everyone could do their freakout like when Notch released his pics

JediPunisher wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 21:54:Itís not that Fargo hates publishers, they are a necessary evilÖ itís that they wouldnít fund the projects he wanted to do. Since Wasteland 2 is already funded, the publisher wonít get the chance to interfere with Brianís vision for the game. Besides, I doubt Brian Fargo wants to spend HALF of the pledges towards marketing, fulfillment, and product support. Iím sure youíll agree, that money is better spent on game content.

"Of COURSE I have had some publishers call me to voice their interest in Wasteland and of me doing RPGs. I knew that was coming. I had one group that wanted to fund my marketing for a piece of the pie. I politely explained that we have an ARMY of fans who are better than any marketing campaign."

Sepharo wrote on Apr 18, 2012, 01:13:Speaking of "Where does the Kickstart money go?" ... If you're a backer you can check out this nice post and pie graph from Double Fine explaining it all here: http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/6443/

According to them it's 5% for Kickstarter and 5% for Amazon.

Good find.

Here's a relevant quote:

RewardsThe next step of this process was figuring out how much it would cost to make and ship all of the physical rewards we offered. It was important that we set aside all this money up front so we could deliver products that live up to our high standards (holy cow you guys are going to be so stoked when you see this stuff). We also wanted to make sure the process of getting this all shipped out had as little impact on the team as possible, so we hired the amazing folks over at Fangamer to handle manufacturing, storing, packing, and shipping all of the rewards. Hereís the breakdown on where it landed:

It may look like a lot of money, but hey itís a lot of rewards! These numbers were actually all being run while the Kickstarter project was still underway. Each time we prepared to add a new reward we ran the numbers to see how much it would cost to offer the new reward to existing backers. For each new reward, that amount was covered within hours of adding the item to the project, so this amount paid for itself and then some by enticing more of you lovely backers to sign up.

The chart says it was $250k manufacturing, $35k fulfillment, $200k shipping, for a total of about $500k for physical rewards.They also mention that after amazon and kickstarter fees and failed transactions it dropped to about $3.1 million from the $3.4 million it ended at. The documentary is going to be $400k (instead of the original $100k). The final double fine amount they can use to make the game is about $2.2 million

At this point things became much more familiar for us. It turned into an exercise in allocating money for expenditures such as VO, localization, music, marketing, and QA testing, then determining how large the team can be and how long the project will run.

In the end it means weíre in a much more ideal situation. Instead of a team of 3 working for around 6 months, weíll have a team of 11 working for around a year, which ultimately will result in a better game. AND ITíS ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!!

This part surprised and impressed me:

There will not. Steam allows developers to give away as many free copies of their game as they would like!

Sepharo wrote on Apr 18, 2012, 01:13:Speaking of "Where does the Kickstart money go?" ... If you're a backer you can check out this nice post and pie graph from Double Fine explaining it all here: http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/6443/

JediPunisher wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 21:54:Since Wasteland 2 is already funded, the publisher wonít get the chance to interfere with Brianís vision for the game. Besides, I doubt Brian Fargo wants to spend HALF of the pledges towards marketing, fulfillment, and product support. Iím sure youíll agree, that money is better spent on game content.

Sure they could. The way publishers are, they could say they'd only sign him and fund marketing/retail publishing if he agreed to give them the IP rights for any sequels, or only agree to it if he put ponies in it. He would be in a position of asking THEM for money for these things so they could say WTF ever they want as a condition, exactly as they've done in the past to him and many others.

Also, he doesn't need to spend much of anything for marketing, many people interested in the game probably already know about it. And the vast horde of consolers wouldn't care anyway about it, they want a CoD shooter and don't care about PC. The rest of the people can find out about it and buy it on steam when it comes out. The people who want a collectors edition box have either already kickstarted or can get it direct once its out.

As for fulfillment, pretty sure if he has a clue, he's factored all that into the equation when he offered those physical product rewards. I doubt he's doing this without at least a basic business plan (he's run a business before). He even knew at what level of pledging he'd have to kick in some of his own money to get the project funded and done.

As for support, indies pull off support, he's done games before, he has a game company, I'm sure he knows what support will require and is ready for it.

In fact, he's not only run a business before, he's run a publishing business before, so he's well aware of all these factors and more besides.

JediPunisher wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 21:54:Itís not that Fargo hates publishers, they are a necessary evilÖ itís that they wouldnít fund the projects he wanted to do. Since Wasteland 2 is already funded, the publisher wonít get the chance to interfere with Brianís vision for the game. Besides, I doubt Brian Fargo wants to spend HALF of the pledges towards marketing, fulfillment, and product support. Iím sure youíll agree, that money is better spent on game content.

"Of COURSE I have had some publishers call me to voice their interest in Wasteland and of me doing RPGs. I knew that was coming. I had one group that wanted to fund my marketing for a piece of the pie. I politely explained that we have an ARMY of fans who are better than any marketing campaign."

I'd assume that's the way they go. Why bother with retail for a PC-only, old-school RPG? How much shelf space would he get at Gamestop, Walmart and Best Buy? Maybe an inch on the bottom shelf, so they can put one copy there, sideways? They'd sell 15 copies if they're lucky.

I'm pretty sure they'll just go digital download only. And Fargo especially has already said that he doesn't care about additional customers. If he gets them, great, but he's making the game for the people who put up their money, and that's all he cares about.

Which is exactly the right attitude to have, and why I think his Kickstarter may become the most successful of all of them.

Creston

Looking at how well Legend of Grimrock is doing, I don't think PC gamers give a fuck about retail anymore. Did LoG have any advertising, or was it all word of mouth?

I'd assume that's the way they go. Why bother with retail for a PC-only, old-school RPG? How much shelf space would he get at Gamestop, Walmart and Best Buy? Maybe an inch on the bottom shelf, so they can put one copy there, sideways? They'd sell 15 copies if they're lucky.

I'm pretty sure they'll just go digital download only. And Fargo especially has already said that he doesn't care about additional customers. If he gets them, great, but he's making the game for the people who put up their money, and that's all he cares about.

Which is exactly the right attitude to have, and why I think his Kickstarter may become the most successful of all of them.

Draugr wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 21:32:Right, because Brian Fargo appears to just be DYING to get in bed with a publisher. I'm going to have to disagree with you on that aspect.

Itís not that Fargo hates publishers, they are a necessary evilÖ itís that they wouldnít fund the projects he wanted to do. Since Wasteland 2 is already funded, the publisher wonít get the chance to interfere with Brianís vision for the game. Besides, I doubt Brian Fargo wants to spend HALF of the pledges towards marketing, fulfillment, and product support. Iím sure youíll agree, that money is better spent on game content.

JediPunisher wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 21:13:Yeah, and Iím guessing that to maximize odds for success, Fargo will put all $3M (minus fees and taxes) towards game development to the exclusion of all else, such as advertising, bonus items, etc. When the game nears completion, they can simply approach a publisher, such as Bethesda, and let them pick up the tab for playtesting, advertising, boxing, and distribution in exchange for a cut of retail sales.

I highly doubt that. He's spent years dreaming of this project and independence from publishers who demand weird things in the game (that video on the kickstarter home page? It REALLY does reflect his actual experience with publishers as he details on his webpage, I suggest watching it).

Far more likely he'll do what valve does with EA, get them for publishing retail boxes (such as valve did with portal 2) and thats it (perhaps some advertising thrown in). Nothing else. Fargo handles the entire development including playtesting and patching.

Or just forgo retail entirely. If he only offers to sell collector's edition boxes (which he has to make anyway for the higher reward tiers for kickstarter) on his website, and sells the game digitally through steam, he'll reach the vast majority of interested PC players anyway. The retail buyers are mostly consolers who want shooters, not wasteland, and the ones who buy retail to get collectors will have a way to do that as it is now.

JediPunisher wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 21:13:Yeah, and Iím guessing that to maximize odds for success, Fargo will put all $3M (minus fees and taxes) towards game development to the exclusion of all else, such as advertising, bonus items, etc. When the game nears completion, they can simply approach a publisher, such as Bethesda, and let them pick up the tab for playtesting, advertising, boxing, and distribution in exchange for a cut of retail sales.

Playtesting is being done by thousands of people who pledged and qualify for beta. The game will be sold via digital distribution (more than likely on Steam, GoG, etc.) so why approach Bethesda or any publisher for that matter? The kickstarter rewards such as the medals and tshirts, boxes, whatever are not expensive to manufacture. The only logistical pain in the ass is getting the right mailing addresses. As I recall, they packaged and sent out the original boxed copies of Fallout 1 on their own. Fargo actually packaged and sold the original Wasteland by himself. Lastly, it's a PC exclusive so why bother with a huge marketing campaign? Why even mention Bethesda?

Legend of Grimrock was just released, is a top seller, did the testing themselves, had no expensive marketing, and already earned enough money to fund their next game. All without Bethesda. It was done by a tiny team of nobodies without a multi-million dollar budget.

jdreyer wrote on Apr 17, 2012, 17:13:I've been PC gaming since the '80s (Telengard, Ultima III, IV), but I must have missed Wasteland. Why is everyone so stoked on a modern take of this ancient game?

Why are we stoked? Here are two reasonsÖ Brian FargoÖ the man responsible for many classic rpgs including The Bardís Tale, Baldurís Gate, Fallout and of course Wasteland. Chris AvelloneÖ the designer of one of the greatest crpgs of all timeÖ Planescape: Torment.

BTW, I havenít thought of Telenguard for decadesÖ Wasnít it similar to Temple of Apshi with random levels and musical puzzle chests?